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So Awkward…

Sometimes I like to plan things out with lots of detail but more often than not I bounce around somewhere between “forgoing good for perfect” and finding a place to lose my latest to-do list. On this occasion I decided that I would invite a few colleagues to a live webcast from what I considered to be good source. I scrambled to invite a group and reserve a room so I thought things were looking good where around 10 people showed up. That was around 50% of the folks I had invited so considering that I gave them less than 2 hours notice I considered the exercise better than a failure and nowhere to go but up.

Well, it turns out that the webcast didn’t fully deliver in my opinion and from the feelings I got from my colleagues I hope I didn’t ding the little “street cred” that I may or may not have. I try to push knowledge and learning onto others, and sometimes I may not always connect the person with the right learning tool but that’s something I am trying to improve.

I think there are 3 key points I hope to keep in mind from this experience:

Start small and invite a couple of people, or send the info out for them to watch it.

Start planning and sending out invites well before the event as it will appear way more professional.

Never let little bumps in the road slow you down and try to learn from even the mediocre attempts to help others learn.

First and foremost, I want to see a totally anonymous poll that shows which vendor is the most loved by the SQL community. At the same time, if you would be kind enough to carry on a dialogue through the comments then I believe everyone would benefit. Choosing or replacing a SAN vendor requires getting past all the marketing fluff and down to the stuff that really matters. I hope that I can start a little momentum in that direction with this poll. Benchmarks and reviews are great if you have links to share. I want to know your bad experiences as well as the days when you were glad you chose a certain vendor.

For many families (and some busy individuals), getting a handle on one or more calendars can become taxing. If you don’t use a calendar at all and you still find that you are more effective than most then it’s time to look at publishing your own best-seller. The truth is, most of us don’t have the mental capacity to keep all of that information in our heads and remember it with any sort of success rate.

That’s where using Google calendars can become invaluable. I am both cursed and blessed with something called ADD. For those who are familiar with it that means there are flashes of brilliance mired by terrible follow through. Having a family calendar help get everyone on the same page and keep them there. While I have issues with the way that Gmail can work sometimes, the calendar feature is has been way more useful to me. Everyone is going to use it differently so I’ll provide the links I’ve used in the past when tweaking things instead of reinventing the well.

I’ve included some resources below that should prove helpful. I didn’t want to reinvent to wheel. When it comes to getting things working smooth with your iPhone or mobile device then that can be a different issue and if there’s interest in that I’ll be glad to point to some resources for that. Hopefully, this will give you enough information to want to check out that Google calendars has to offer. And hopefully you will take it to the level of sharing a calendar between more than one person (spouse) and improve coordination.

I have given in to fighting the urge any longer. I’m pretty strict about trying to keep my personal and private life separate and I will continue to keep that balance in the future. Typically, Facebook is thought of more as a personal outlet and that is true for the most part. But if you were a business wouldn’t it make more sense to go to where your customer is already at, instead of expecting them to only come to your blog or website?

In the past it has been as simple as using Facebook for personal and family needs, while using Twitter and LinkedIn for professional purposes. There are plenty of articles out there about the dangers that one can encounter with their employer while using Facebook, and I am sure you have seen the recent news about employers requesting passwords…legally or not. I have finally broken down and added a fan page to facebook. I have seen Pinal Dave (Blog | Twitter) and Brent Ozar (Blog | Twitter) use it successfully so I thought I would give it a go as well.

Hopefully, it can be another useful tool in forming my online brand and interacting with peers and potential clients. It’s also like anything else that we choose to invest time in, and we have to weigh the benefits to see if it helps us to reach our goals. I intend on writing more about how you can use facebook in this way for your business or freelance work (what I do), but I will sit back and enjoy the view for a bit and see how useful it can be first.

Have you used Facebook fan pages successfully? What do you wish you would have known when you set it up the first time? Feel free to offer any resources you’ve found helpful in the comments. Be sure to click Like on my Facebook fan page if you’d be so kind.

This is my first time to participate in the T-SQL Tuesday so take it easy on me. I really do come in peace.

It’s funny to me that this is one of the key things that drove me into the SQL world. I blogged about this last year explaining how I “Cheated on SQL Server”. Things have kept going uphill from that point and there are no regrets, but I don’t guess I will ever go from Jack blogger to Master blogger. Sounds like I should be in a guild or something.

Seeing Argenis Fernandez (Blog | Twitter) post on Leaving DBA-Land it resonates with how I feel about the leaving the SysAdmin world. I’m not sure if you ever really leave it all behind. I find myself needing to know more than ever about storage (like SANs) and how it pertains to SQL. I find myself needing to learn more about networking and the bandwidth that matters when you are discussing how SQL talks to its friends (or enemies).

I hate code by the way, never will I specialize in writing code. I will leave that to other Jacks and Masters because I really don’t want anything to do with it. Some people’s minds just don’t work as well when it comes to that. I’ll just stick with beating you in the 40-yard dash (based off my high school time of course). I tend to gravitate towards the Database Administrator side of things with Performance and Standards. It’s kind of cool to be dogmatic about at least one thing in your career, so master the “art of saying NO” to those developers who want too much access, that way you can sleep at 2am.

What is wild is that while we are always talking about specialization, the DBA certifications are trending more towards the developer (at least they were in 2008). Crap…I don’t want to be a developer. Anyway, hope you have fun getting just a little bit closer to being a Master or Jack of some trade so that you can pay the bills.

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About Jason

I'm just another guy trying to contribute to the SQL Server community in the same manor that I have witnessed from others. Hopefully, I can help others continue learning in life and technology as well.